The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 20, 2023

Romans 11, 13–15; 29–32

Brothers and sisters: I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as you once disobeyed God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now disobeyed in order that, by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.

In my own opinion, the most difficult books of the New Testament in terms of reading and understanding are The Book of Revelation and the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans.  In the case of the first, we tend to read it as though it were a novel or straightforward history, that is, as a record of consecutive events.  We are as mistaken when we do this as we would be to read the Book of Isaiah that way, and for the same reason.  Revelation is a collection of seven visions, some distinct from the others, some overlapping, in terms of subject matter.  Once we recognize the structure of Revelation, we can read with greater understanding, especially if we have a good Catholic Bible with notes to elucidate the identity of the various creatures that pop up in the course of the visions.  Unfortunately, few Bibles show where the visions begin and end, but simply being aware that this book is a set of visions is helpful.  On the other hand, the difficulty with Romans is that it is a letter written by St. Paul to a Christian community which has contacted him with their concerns, leaving us to hear only part of the conversation.  It is a bit like hearing only one side of a telephone call, as an eavesdropper.  St. Paul was not renting to write Scripture.  He was answering questions, and we are left guessing what the questions were.  And the questions are not always clear to us because they involve cultures and times that are foreign to us.  Paul is writing to Christians who until recently had been Jews or Gentiles.  Few of us have been Jews and few of us grew up steeped in Greek and Roman mythology and religious practices.  But it was to these people, with their particular questions, that Paul was writing.

“I am speaking to you Gentiles.”  Most of the Christians at Rome at this time in history (between the years 58-61) were Gentiles.  Paul wrote to them in Greek since he probably did not speak Latin and expected his readers to know Greek.  That there were Jewish Christians among his readers is clear from the fact that Paul needs to single out the Gentiles in the way he has in this verse.  He does so to make a question that was heatedly discussed at the time: Can the Jews be saved?  A like question rose from this: If Jesus came to save the Jews and they, in large part, rejected him, what was the purpose for the conversion of the Gentiles?  Paul begins his answer by stating, “Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them.”  That is, Inasmuch as I was sent to preach to the Gentiles . . . in order to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them.  Paul partly intends, through converting the Gentiles to the worship of the God of Abraham, to show the Jews the vitality of the word of God in this “new way” so that they might study it with less hostility and be converted themselves.   “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?”  That is, the rejection of Christ by the bulk of the Jews freed the Apostles to go forth to the Gentiles to preach to them instead.  We see this dramatically declared by St. Paul himself in the synagogue at Antioch in Asia Minor when the Jews rejected his message: “To you it behoved us first to speak the word of God: but because you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13, 46).  Paul is saying to the Romans that if the present rejection of Jesus by the Jews was leading to the reconciliation of the sinful world to God through belief in Jesus, then how much the later acceptance of Jesus by the Jews would lead to their own eternal life.  “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”  The Chosen People remain the Chosen People even after rejecting their Savior.  They might reject him, but God continues to choose the Jews because God is ever faithful to his covenant with them.  Because of God’s continued faithfulness, they may overcome their initial rejection and convert and be saved.

“Just as you once disobeyed God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now disobeyed in order that, by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy.”  Paul reiterates what he has put forward in order to show the clear relation between the Gentile Christians and the Jews: they are not to look down on the Jews but to see them as they themselves once were, and to pray and to work for their conversion.  And, by extension, they are not to see themselves as superior to the Jewish Christians among them, for all have received the mercy of God.  “For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.”  Paul means here that God allowed us all — Jew and Gentile — to fall into sin when we willfully chose it and rejected him.  Our common heritage, then, is sin, and the Lord had mercy on us all in calling us all to him.

Paul writes of God’s marvelous Providence, working through the sin of one people to bring about the salvation of another, and then working through those to bring about the salvation of the first.  In this, he glorified himself, for only God could accomplish this and in this way.  We are reminded by Paul, here, of how God has worked through the actions of others — even their wicked actions — to draw us to him.  And we should be aware of our obligation to pray for those through whom he has worked so that they might be saved as well.

This section of St. Paul’s Letter the Church uses for the Second Reading st Mass today omits a number of verses, as can be seen in the citation at the head of the Reading.  This section should be read altogether for a fuller understanding of Paul’s teaching.